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I just love how video games are always the target of the media. It really is kind of impressive the level of consistency they have in caricaturing gamers as one bad thing or another. No matter what the big social issue is of any given age, you can be somebody somewhere has decided to make it about video games. After all, gamers are a very easy to mock lot. We have a very insular hobby that doesn’t typically preclude socialization. It’s easy to see people out getting drunk and partying and going “yeah! They’re really living it up!” and then looking at this other group and going “why aren’t you out doing fun stuff like this?” Never mind that gaming has become a multi-billion dollar industry that rivals Hollywood. Granted, a lot of that is built on unsustainable business practices, but let’s not dive too deep into nerd culture. We’re talking about reactionary idiot culture, after all.

Jack Thompson wanted to make it that video games encourage violence. Something that was proven demonstrably false. There has never been any evidence, anywhere, the video games cause violent behavior, or affect how a person acts in real life on any significant way. Anita Sarkeesian decided to take a crack at saying that video games cause sexism. Even though it has also been disproven that that is the case. Before a study from Germany came out that actually did the hard leg work, an easy refutation of her arguments was – if video games cannot cause a person to be violent, how can they cause a person to be sexist? If one predominately negative behavior has NEVER been demonstrated to exist with gamers, then how does the other one? Good point.

NBC News decided to take a crack at saying video games are being subtly used to help destroy the good society of regressive-left values. After all, it’s been shown that the regressive left is all over NBC’s big sister, MSNBC. Why wouldn’t it filter down into them? In a new video, they decided to try and make the argument out to be that gaming is secretly helping motivate the alt-right, and how GamerGate was all part of it. During the video I will share, my biggest wonder was – why did Anita Sarkeesian not give these people an interview? They certainly are taking cues from her. Let’s take a look at the video and talk about it.

Even the title of this video is patronizing. Gamers are facilitating the rise of the alt-right? Give me a fucking break. What evidence is there of that contention? Fuck it, let’s talk about the video. It opens by saying that Discord is the latest sign of a secret cabal between gamers and the alt-right. They’re gonna connect the dots for us! Okay, video, let’s hear it.

Gaming culture has always been racist and sexist? Wow, that is insulting. What evidence is there of this? The fact that gaming is done by people all over the world, of all ethnic groups? That women and men are able to enjoy the hobby? Casual gaming is predominately women, with chicks on their phones with phone games. And the core gaming audience only cares about one thing – skill in the game. If you are the kind of person who plays online games, which I know is where this video is going. But what about people like me? I game for story. I’m not a racist and sexist. I’m a misanthrope, I hate my entire species. Racism is just more work when I can hate everyone just as well.

Who brought up this little tidbit, anyway? Emma Vossen, PhD candidate? Why the fuck do I care what some PhD candidate thinks? How about getting me a vetted expert in the field with years of research that they can show to demonstrate their knowledge and prove their contentions? The video tells us that she’s showing how sexism in gaming is being shown in the real world. This better be good. Otherwise it will look like they are mining for whatever idiot they can find to prove that they are right. I’m sure that’s not the case, right…?

The “evidence” for her contention is her “study” that the video says is about how #GamerGate was about harassing women in games journalism. Um…no, it wasn’t. At any point. Let’s ignore all the bullshit lies about what the movement was about. When all this started with the Zoe Post, it was about Zoe Quinn. She has never been a games journalist. When the movement forgot about her because it was more interested in the people who she was fucking and how unethical those people looked, it was five men that were the targets. Not a single woman. Then came the torrent of “Gamers are Dead” articles that really kicked things into high gear, along with the censorship of the topics of what at the time was the Quinnspiracy. Then it became #GamerGate and it was centered around the fact that games journalism was corrupt and that SJW influence had taken complete control over it. A contention that was completely vindicated in the leaks of the Crash Override Network chat logs. All of this is easy to verify. The Internet Aristocrat videos that really blew the situation up are all mirrored on YouTube and easy to find. The Factual Feminist’s response video to the whole affair is easy to find too. Disproving this narrative is so fucking simple that it blows my mind, and I’m kind of shocked NBC didn’t see it. Maybe that’s why this video has a paltry 200+ likes and 20,000+ dislikes. Makes ya think.

So, GamerGate secured the “alt-right movement.” Did these idiots not know the first thing about actual research? This is almost as bad as Hipster McGee on PBS’ short-lived gaming channel. GamerGate has all kinds of personalities involved with it. There were people from all different walks of life who were virtually guaranteed to hate each other coming together under one banner – that games journalism is corrupt and pushing a social justice narrative. What evidence does this “PhD candidate” have? Oh, right, they show Tweets that are very unpleasant. Well, that sure does cement that point. If anything, all of this just shows how pathetic the world of academia’s standards have become when I can Google search and destroy Vossen’s entire premise in under five minutes. Bravo.

And somehow all of this came to prominence during the 2016 election cycle. Are you kidding me?! By 2016, GamerGate was pretty much dead. You’d see the tag every now and again, but it was pretty much gone. The idea that this movement that had NOTHING to do with the Presidential election or any kind of politics outside of the gaming sphere was somehow connected to Donald Trump is laughable at best and downright fabrication of facts to support a narrative at worst. Oh, it influenced the “tactics” of Trump supporters. What tactics? Details, woman. Her argument is that minorities are “fighting for equality” and white men are saying they are oppressed. To borrow a phrase…

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just DOESN’T BELONG!

We then get some quote without knowing if this was from a voice chat during gaming or just some racist asshole being asked a question in an interview. Yeah, the guy is a racist asshole, but without knowing where this was recorded from, how does this asshole saying shit correlate to gaming culture? They have an actual quote where a sexist asshole says something rude. Okay.

Our “PhD candidate” has to clarify that not all gamers are sexist and racist (fucking duh), but the culture overall is sexist and racist. And they say this while showing a clip from a video game where you play as a killer trying to kill stereotypical slasher characters who happen to be female. Wow. That’s so subtle I think it could be taught at a university. You know, if it isn’t being so already. I would just love if they showed that with a clip from a game like ABZU or Persona 5 and see how that stacks up. Wait, that wouldn’t go with the narrative being pushed. Can’t have that.

Then we get some new guy saying that Discord is the real culprit and the video makes the argument that it went from gamers being online to idiots with tiki torches in the real world. Not even if we bought into this stupid premise would that make any fucking sense. They’ve made blanket statements about gamers and how gaming culture is sexist and racist without any verifiable evidence to back it up, and are now making the argument that this somehow led to people on Discord being racist and sexist and becoming alt-right Neo-Nazis.

And that’s all I got on this video. NBC News, supposedly more straight news than their big sister company, put this on their official YouTube page and expect people to take it seriously. Thankfully, the Internet didn’t bite. This video is massively down-voted. Not even the social justice retards who are all in favor of this crap can support it. It’s bad argumentation. It’s slipper slope fallacy. It’s guilt by association fallacy. It’s correlation equaling causation fallacy. It’s stupid. I’m done.

There are days, growing in number, when I think that the real failure of GamerGate was that we gave a platform to the stupidest and most corrupt part of video games. After all, the disgusting, amoral horse-face known as Brianna Wu is running for Congress. Can’t wait to watch her get destroyed in debates. We also gave the talentless hacks like Zoe Quinn a platform as a “game developer.” Because if her choose-your-own-adventure “game” Depression Quest didn’t show you what a great talent she is, then the fact that she has a new Kickstarter project that has over 2,000 people who have donated should give you pause. What is this project for, you ask? Well, why should I tell you, when I can show you instead. The phrase cringe-worthy is so overused these days, but it’s so fucking fitting. Get ready to cringe until you have no capacity left to cringe.

Let me put this in context for you – 2,000 people have donated to this. That’s right, at least 2,000 people wanted to see this. That is assuming Quinn didn’t use sock puppet accounts to make it look better than it is. We learned that she will use sock puppet accounts to get what she wants. Like during that very mature fight she had with Candace Owens. However, let’s give this madness the benefit of the doubt and assume that over 2,000 people actually saw this and were like, “yeah, this seems like a worthwhile cause.”

What will they be getting for their money? Well, I’ll tell you – this insane bullshit! A full-motion game that didn’t learn from the fact that full-motion games were universally terrible. And what is this game about? Well, as we learn from the opening scene, it’s about pounding ass! That’s right, this game apparently is about the “Tingleverse” where gay sex abounds and I’m assuming Tom Cruise is working at a fudge factory packing fudge.

I, I don’t get this. Who is this appealing to? Who thinks this is funny? What’s the joke? That you can draw dicks? Okay, I guess. That we have people in weird costumes being gay together? That we can get talentless hacks like Mara Wilson, Jim Sterling, and Willy Wheaton to be in this? Wait, is that Dante fucking Basco?! How far you can fall from Avatar: The Last Airbender to this insipid crap that has gotten thousands of dollars raised. I think it was over $80,000 as of my last checking the Kickstarter page.

And it’s gay erotica? Is the idea here that all these people just decided that they would do something stupid just for the fuck of it? If that’s the case, why would 2,000 people decide this was worth giving their money to? Fuck it, I’m calling it, this is Zoe Quinn with sock-puppet accounts. I’m sure Willy and his succubus wife gave sizable donations, but I think the bulk of the small-time donations are from Quinn using sock-puppets to falsely inflate this product.

Maybe the goal here is to get on gamers nerves so she can say, “look at those losers! They’re all mad over this stupid thing?!” I’m not mad, Zoe. I’m…what was this made for? I don’t get it. Who finds this funny? What was the funny part? Mara Wilson being in a chair talking about gay sex? That’s not funny. Why didn’t they get Gail Chord Schuler to do it? She’s shown to be pretty damn good making gay sex funny as fuck. Look up her book “Jesus the Eternal Bridegroom.” Her reads of that book is the greatest thing ever. Still have fond memories of that on the Drunken Peasants.

Nothing in there is funny. I half-expected to see Steve Shives in this. I guess this is where the talentless’ careers go to die. We have washed-up celebrities like Wesley from Star Trek, Mara Wilson, and Chris Kluwe. And I am fucking shocked that they got Dante Basco to do this. Did his career suddenly die off as well? Did he peak with his last role in cartoons and now is just playing out the string? We already knew that Jim Sterling sides with the sex – SJWs, so him supplying the voice to a monkey isn’t the shocking.

I’m just trying to understand what the goal was here. To see how many idiots and their money could be parted? Did they want in on that piece of Anita Sarkeesian pie? Why wasn’t she helping out with this? Actually, scratch that. My opinion of her has immediately improved because she has more self-respect than to join in with this crap.

Nope. I give up. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. It will never get dumber than this. The SJWs will think they made me mad or are hoping for some gamer to get their knickers in a twist. They haven’t. It’s like they decided to make something about gay sex in the hopes of getting people riled up so they can say, “They can’t take a joke!” Didn’t work. I’m not riled up. Why? Because I honestly can’t understand the motivations here. If I understood what they were going for, maybe then I’d be mad. But I don’t, so I’m not. Wow, what a complete waste of my time.

Oh look, it’s everyone’s favorite professional victim who is back to wear her victimhood like a badge of honor even though the Internet forgot about her years ago. And since she can’t just sit back and let herself fall into obscurity like the vulture that she is, when the director of a new game that looks pretty cool came out and she found out through her information network that he had said positive things about the now-defunct culture war #GamerGate, she had to get her little army of minions to go out and attack him. I am, of course, talking about the director or The Last Night.

See, the director of that game actually believes that ethical standards in games journalism is something worth fighting for, and that the world of Indie games is a toxic circlejerk of multi-colored hair warriors who have to suck each other off so hard. And since Zoe Quinn hasn’t been in the public eye in so long, just like Brianna Wu she had to get the old victim train going. Also just like Brianna Wu, Zoe is a cunt-rag who tries to play off what at terrible person she is as everyone just being mean to her.

Let’s take a look at the narrative she paints for herself. According to her, she was the tragic victim of a horrible man who chose to slut-shame her and paint the scarlet letter on her in the public square. And ever since she has been the victim of virtually non-stop abuse by all the evil people of the Internet. That’s the narrative that she paints. The same one that her and her more-successful professional victim comrade Anita Sarkeesian painted in front of the UN while they argued that the Internet should have everyone who disagrees with them removed. Not that Zoe would know what it’s like for people to disagree with her. Her echo chamber is so massive that she lives in it. Every time that she has even slightly ventured out of it the weight of her lies almost destroyed her.

What is the truth? Simple – her ex-boyfriend Eron wrote a hugely-long post where he laid out how betrayed he felt by her. Among the endless reasons why was the fact that she had been cheating on him, with five people. Mundane’s Matt and Internet Aristocrat’s video of what happened led her to being the catalyst to the online culture war known as #GamerGate. And very quickly Zoe became forgotten amongst the far more interesting topics at hand. Topics like the fact that several of the people who she had cheated on Eron with were people who had covered in the games media before. In fact Nathan Grayson became a far more interesting topic than she ever was. All she did was create a boring video game about living with depression. A choose-your-adventure game about depression. Yeah, sounds like a recipe for great “gameplay.”

After the storm that was GamerGate died down, Zoe found herself in the media in other ways. Like how she was busted red-handed leading a online blitzkrieg of attacks against Candace Owens. There had been a blog post where she laid out what had happened, and how she was able to put together that Zoe was directly responsible for the attacks against her. A really scum-fuck thing to do. As I said, she went to the UN, where she desperately tried to sell that the Internet still sent daily hate to her, even though it is easily-provable that the Internet moved on from her not long after the hashtag #GamerGate was founded by Adam Baldwin. Given how she was able to generate an attack against Candace Owens through mysterious anonymous sources, it’s not hard to think that probably most of the hate she has ever received was from the same sock-puppet accounts.

Oh, and let’s not forget the leaked chat logs from Crash Override Network, Zoe’s little circlejerk of victimhood that showed that she had actively sabotaged the Rebel Game Jam she had been a part of in order to cash in on the social justice points and make herself look good while the rest of them look bad. I still believe the person who sponsored that event should sue her. Or how she doxxed and ruined the Fine Young Capitalist’s fundraising event to help promote women in gaming, which she didn’t like because they weren’t promoting her. And just like all feminists with a sense of entitlement up her non-existent ass, she had to make them pay for not making everything in that project about her. But again, she’s a victim. Not a scum-fuck.

Now she has turned her refusal to let her 15 minutes of shame die into an attack against someone who hasn’t done thing one against her other than support an online movement. That’s it. That’s all he did. Then Notch had to go and take the Internet’s ire by calling her a cunt. Which, you know, she is. Indefensibly so. Zoe Quinn is a cunt with a capital C. She is a horrible person who wanted to make a game that was neatly stealing the show at E3 about her. Because why shouldn’t a big game reveal be about her? And of course the parasites at Feminist Frequency have come out in support of her. Why not.

Zoe, you are a cunt. You are a terrible person. I don’t lightly use that term, but it describes you perfectly. What’s more, you actually believed you are owed something for the fact that people see you for what you are after all of the debacle that you were barely a part of. You believe that you are owed. That just blows my fucking mind. Zoe Quinn feels that the Internet owes HER for the shit she has pulled. No, Zoe! You owe people an apology. People like Eron, who had those of us who supported GamerGate donate to his defense fund, which when you realized that the trial didn’t make you look good you dropped. People like Candace Owens, who busted you dead to rights for a campaign of doxing and harassment through sock puppet accounts. There are so many people who you owe. But you won’t. After all, admitting wrongdoing just fucks with the narrative. Can’t have that. Then you might start self-reflection and that might just lead you to realize what a fucking piece of shit you are.

Until next time, a quote,

“Mr Worf, villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well-camouflaged.” – Capt. Picard

Before you go off and say that I am doing what everyone else has been doing and mining what has happened for clicks, hear me out. I got me degree in Journalism and Public Communication. I have an understanding of this medium better than most. And it is because of that that I feel a great sense of shame and pity for what has happened here. Everything about what has happened was a sign of how the medium that I grew up loving, who was supposed to be the vanguards of democracy, is failing. And there is no coming back from it. But here’s the thing – we all should have seen this coming. From a long ways off, this was apparent to me. It’s happened before, and it now it is beginning to happen again.

Where did it start? You could make the argument that it most recently started with the Wall Street Journal putting out a video which was an unfounded hit-piece on the YouTube personality PewDiePie. There was no defending that video. None. It was such blatant bullshit that you felt ashamed of yourself watching it. To think that a news outlet that was once believed to be a very respectable source could make an attack video against a YouTuber for a video where he was blatantly satirizing the people calling him racist and making a joke about finally giving in and becoming a Nazi. It was all so obvious, and the Internet tore the Journal to pieces over it. But that isn’t where it started.

Maybe it started back in 2014, with a little uprising known as GamerGate. Indeed, the parallels between what happened to Felix and that instance are rather shocking. We have a corrupt press colluding together to take on an Internet culture that is clearly a threat to their industry, and now we see the beginnings of a new culture war. And just like with the “Gamers are Dead” articles, now we have every major media outlet releasing a barrage of articles lambasting Felix and his politics. Also just like GamerGate, this is blowing up in the media’s face so badly that not one person involved is walking away clean. I don’t think this is where it started either.

The first time I truly got a taste of the downfall was looking at a video on NPR. I didn’t believe what I was seeing. There was a link to a video that was, quite literally, an unboxing video. That’s right, NPR, one of the most respected journalism outlets who does some truly biting work from time to time examining critical issues. was doing an unboxing video. It was of a PS4. A lot of people tried to make the argument that they were trying to talk about unboxing videos. That’s wrong. It wasn’t a video about unboxing. It was a fucking unboxing video. I was so embarrassed for them at that point. However, that most certainly wasn’t where it started.

So where was it? Where was the great downfall of the media’s beginning? The beginning of the Internet? Getting closer, but still no bueno. It was actually around the time when Princess Di was killed. The news at the time wasn’t talking about the facts of her death. Instead, they were creating narratives. It couldn’t be enough that a great woman died. No, the narrative had to be that a wonderful, fantastic woman died. And her passing needed a good catch phrase and sad music to be played over it. It was when cable news decided to come into the picture and turn the news from a discussion about the events of the day that transpired, to a narrative telling their audiences how to think about the news.

Here’s the thing – this idea of unbiased reporting is bullshit. There is no such thing. You can strive to be as unbiased as possible, have a rigorous vetting process to remove the scruples of bias to whatever extent you can. But the cold hard truth is that you still have to deal with the fact that bias exists, and it will always be there. Edward R Murrow admitted his bias, but his way of counter-manning it was to let the other side have its day. He let Joseph McCarthy come on his show and give a very passionate defense of his position, where he called Murrow and his ilk all sorts of unprofessional names. In giving his stage to his opposition, Murrow did more to cement how right he is in the eyes of the public. Still, Murrow was biased. The best minds are. Walter Cronkite told some harrowing stories about the war in Vietnam, but he did so with an agenda to get the troops out of there. He had a bias, but he had enough dedication to his craft to make sure to get people to the truth as close as he could. It wasn’t hard to sell people on the war in Vietnam being a bad idea.

PewDiePie is the victim of a medium that is lost. Print media is dying. I feel it all the time. I am just one of a thousand blogs that are ignored by the masses. My audience is still pretty awesome, but I realize that I am part of a bygone era. I don’t have video-making chops. This is the best I can do. Like all animals that feel their end coming, the media is lashing out. PewDiePie makes for an easy target. His popularity cannot be overstated. Traditional media has to work very hard for all of their stories. Felix basically just gets in front of a camera and plays video games, then he makes millions. He makes astronomical amounts of money just by exaggerating his expressions while playing video games, and now making more original content. Of course the media who has to work hard to make any content would despise such a person.

And for those who will say “it’s not anything to do with that! It was the fact that he used Nazi imagery in his videos!” First, the video they went after was so cherry-picked and avoided context where Felix showed that he has no love for Nazis, but decided to give the media who attacked him to no end what they wanted. They do everything they can to take his videos out of context. And when the Internet took them to task for it, the media overall decided to try and make it in to a big deal about how context doesn’t matter. Actually, dumb fucks, it does. It really does.

Old media is dying, and its final death throes will not be pretty. But I don’t miss them. Sure, the person who spent $40,000 on a degree like me would be pissed that some guy on YouTube can make boatloads of money. But I don’t see any of them trying to make a niche for themselves. I mean, when a high school dropout can become the biggest atheist channel on YouTube and last for longer than anyone else on the site, that means that if you can keep a fresh idea and change up for your audience enough, then you can make a new brand for yourself. Media has to change with the times. Its refusal to do so leads to some unbelievably sad things.

Man, here’s something I never thought I would be talking about again. It’s been YEARS since GamerGate was a thing. During the heyday battles, it was a conflict that ran the gamut of ideological participants. It brought groups who absolutely despise one-another together for the common goal of striking back against the games media and how corrupt it had become. How it was pretty blatantly shilling a progressive message and leaving any form of objectivity at the door. A fact that was apparently championed by “consumer advocate” landwhales like Jim Sterling, who listened to a game dev talk about doxing people and nodded while saying “absolutely.” Given his stances on Quiet and sexy women in games, that should surprise no one.

I’ve heard every group imaginable be blamed for Donald Trump getting elected. Russia is the biggest one, for their alleged leaks of documents that not one person has been able to prove are untrue. Assuming it is true, I say that we should be thanking them. Russia didn’t leak some lie to the American people. It was the truth. The truth about Hillary Clinton having her entire party behind her and manipulating the electoral process as much as possible to destroy Bernie Sanders. Huh, makes you wonder if the reason that people didn’t like her is because she is a vindictive bitch. That’s not to say that I like Trump. Although, when you think about the alternatives, he really is the best option. Hillary was doomed, regardless. Had it been Ted Cruz who won the primary, he would have taken the WikiLeaks documents and beaten her to death with them.

However, in addition to blaming Russia, Millennials, Bernie Sanders, and neo-nazis for Trump winning, now the L.A. Times wants to add GamerGate to the pile. Oh boy, this should be fun. Here’s a link to the article, now let’s talk about it.

SEE IF THIS CAMPAIGN TACTIC sounds familiar: Rally white men who feel the world is changing too fast, leverage racial bias for the cause, and demean women along the way.

The strategy belonged to a radical corner of the gaming world that may have provided the winning playbook for the campaign that won the presidential election.

I’m gonna destroy the white men argument right out of the gate so I don’t have to bring that up again when destroying the rest of this bullshit argument. Because this author clearly gets his news from BuzzFeed, I guess he didn’t know about the tag that came with GamerGate – #NotYourShield. Here’s a video that may put it into perspective. Alright, moving on. I can already see the insane strawman corollary that is being drawn here, but let’s let him get into it a bit more.

“Gamergate” is the term now used to describe the movement in which Internet trolls attacked high-profile people in the game industry if they attempted to change — or even speak out about — the misogynistic themes of video games. They are the gaming world’s radical right, and they’re fighting back against what they see as the onslaught of politically correct culture.

Actually, numb-nuts, GamerGate supporters ran the spectrum of political ideologies. There are left-leaning social libertarians like me. You had classical liberals like Sargon of Akkad. You had conservatives who tried to avoid the politics of it all like Internet Aristocrat. You had left-leaning gaming commentators like Mundane Matt. There were all kinds in this movement. If anything, it was impressive in how it brought together not just people of different ideologies, but people from various gaming spheres. GameFAQs and Reddit forums came together in a show of solidarity never seen before. Boards that hated each other like it was no one’s business on 4chan came together. And all of it was sparked off when Eron Gjoni wrote his post, which Mundane Matt covered in a video that got a DMCA flag, which caught Internet Aristocrat’s attention. You can’t even make your caricature of GamerGate right. But again, he probably got all of his news from BuzzFeed and the rest of the left-leaning media. It didn’t matter how many people debunked what they were saying, the narrative stuck.

The trajectories of Trump and Gamergate could be practically charted by the same graph — guys (for the most part) that a significant portion of the country didn’t take seriously pandered to humanity’s most base instincts and won.

Actually, they are very far apart. GamerGate was tired of the social justice culture injecting itself into video games. You say that we rebelled against news outlets talking about “misogynistic themes in video games” (citation, please), but that’s not true. What we rebelled against was the injection of social justice where it clearly wasn’t wanted or needed. I’m sure you will come on and say, “It was needed! Gaming is misogyny! Just look at how sexy that woman is! That’s demeaning to all women!” However, there were a TON of very well-educated voices who spoke out against this attitude. Like this video by Christina Hoff Summers.

Donald Trump won the election because he convinced people that he was some big outsider who was going to fight against the corporate government establishment that people were so tired of. He capitalized on the same energy the Bernie Sanders had. I knew that Trump wasn’t some big outsider, because I actually pay attention to history. He’s center-right, much like Hillary Clinton. There really isn’t that much difference between them. GamerGate started as a consumer revolt. Donald Trump started as a con artist capitalizing on energy that a genuine believer already had stirred up. The truth is that these two movements have almost nothing in common, outside of people being tired of the status quo, and fighting against it.

The term “Gamergate” emerged as a hashtag in mid-August 2014. It described the attacks, particularly on women in the gaming world, by trolls and eventually their de-facto leader Milo Yiannopoulos, who became Gamergate’s Breitbart champion.

There were no leaders in this movement, dude. None. That was part of the problem. The movement had no unifying message. Some of its proponents took actions, and some didn’t. Some chose to do this thing or that thing, but the truth is that all we had in common was a shared dislike of politics in video games journalism. We just wanted to get straight news, and not have to hear about how Gone Home is the greatest game ever, just because it involves a gay chick. Whoopty-fucking-doo. Milo was definitely an ally of the movement, but he was not a leader. I am really wondering where this guy got his news.

He goes on to make Milo out to be just like Trump. This dude will take whatever he can to try and make these two things seem connected. It’s kind of sad, if we’re being honest here.

Female game designers and journalists who spoke out about a more inclusive future for the medium were harassed on social media with threats of physical attacks, rape and death. Their emails were leaked (sound familiar?), and some saw details about their personal lives published online.

Let’s break this down, piece by piece. I know what “game developers” he’s talking about – Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu. Zoe Quinn was nothing to the movement but a launching point. To be honest, we cared more about Nathan Grayson than we did about her. After all, it was him that she was sleeping with, and him who had given her positive coverage (not a review. People had said he reviewed her game, and that wasn’t true. But he had written positive articles about her. He is also crediting in Quinn’s “game” Depression Quest), which basically broke every rule about conflict of interest. After she faded from the spotlight, she did everything she possibly could to pretend that the movement still cared about her. Neat thing – Quinn was actually busted propagating a harassment campaign against a developer of an app. Dead to rights, she was busted exploited personal information the app developer gave her to orchestrate a harassment campaign, and only stopped when the person threatened to go public about it. Which they did anyway. Well-played.

Next up we have Brianna Wu. A woman whose 15 minutes of fame went on FAR too long. She was one of the many people who came out and attempted to make the story about her. Every time she could possibly find a way to make herself out to be the victim, she did. Like when she exploited the death of a woman who wasn’t even remotely connected to GamerGate to sell her own victimhood. An act so repulsive that I was openly venomous with her. Using the horrific death of a woman to sell the fact that she is “in danger” was just sick. Then, Wu was busted trolling herself on Steam to try and rack up victimhood points. Guess she didn’t get the memo to make sure to switch to an appropriately-misogynistic sock-puppet account first. Idiot.

As for the leaked emails, I’m assuming he’s talking about the GameJournoPros list that got leaked. Neat fact about that – most of the emails and senders whose names got leaked in that were men. This Todd really must get his news from a fantastic source.

“Lock her up,” Trump supporters shouted about Hillary Clinton.

“I hope you die,” Gamergate champions tweeted at Anita Sarkeesian, a prominent cultural critic who critiques games from a feminist perspective.

Yes, let’s equate what people said at a political rally to what trolls said to a con artist who used them to get victim points. Sure, that sounds equivalent.

Gamergate advocates argued that gaming journalists were corrupt and were colluding to bring a politically correct makeover to the medium (read: take away our digital guns, treat women as something more than sex objects and cast someone — anyone — other than a white male as the lead protagonist).

Wow. What gross hyperbole. Care to back that up with a citation? Because, from where I’m sitting, Internet Aristocrat made a truly fantastic series of videos detailing how the story played out (linked here). I suggest you take a look at that before saying that we were all just losing our shit over nothing, which I take it is what you meant with this comparison.

Also, treat women as something other than sex objects? Considering how many women were involved in GamerGate, that’s fucking sexist, dude. That’s basically denying the women involved and their opinions on the subject. Fuck you.

Those who bought into his words targeted their ire at female critics who sought to intellectualize the medium. Ultimately, they were only bringing to light gaming’s more regrettable traits: that it has long pandered to a male-focused, gun-obsessed community where women were damsels more often than heroes.

To intellectualize the medium? Oh really? By disabling comments and not once responding to critics, many of whom were level-headed and who wanted honest debate with the likes of Anita Sarkeesian? Gee, funny how that works. Seems that revisionist history is alive and well. But you are making comparisons to GamerGate and Donald Trump. I’m not surprised.

As for the “regrettable traits,” there have been a TON of fantastic, well-researched, well-made videos that have shown the points that the likes of Anita Sarkeesian has made to be ridiculous. Here’s one by Mr Repzion. Here’s one by Triox. These videos that Anita has done about the “regrettable traits” blatantly ignore context and use bad examples. But since research clearly isn’t your strong suit, I guess you don’t really care. Oh well.

The biggest, most visible games are still largely created by men for boys. Gamergate ultimately was driven by nostalgia and fear of change.

“Keep politics out of games,” was Gamergate proponents’ rallying cry, but they may as well have been saying, “Make games great again.”

Bullshit. GamerGate was driven by the disgust we had at a blatantly-corrupt gaming journalism scene, along with the white knights who defended it. This idea that we were just like people at a rally is stupid. Not to mention – games are already great. They were great before the SJWs decided to inject their bullshit narrative into gaming. And since games have continued on the straight and narrow and are a billion-dollar industry, it seems they will keep being great. Works for me.

There’s evidence that major developers are listening to their broader audience rather than being bullied by Gamergate, as recent titles such as “Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End,” “Watch Dogs 2” and “Dishonored 2” have touched on mature themes with a wide variety of characters.

Another one of these hipster gamers who doesn’t have ANY perspective on gaming to realize that touching on “mature themes” goes back a long way. Like how the character of Billy in Xenogears was a child prostitute to help feed his family. Or how one of the biggest themes in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the tragedy of getting old and the inevitability of aging. Not to mention the truly dark and dismal themes in the follow-up game Majora’s Mask that touched on why being an adult sucks, that time and death is inevitable, and that life goes on in even the worst of circumstances. Then there is Final Fantasy X, which looked at the corruption of religion, atheism, and how faith can be used to control a population. But please, tell me more about how gaming is just now getting “mature themes.” What a brilliant researcher. This guy must be making the big bucks at the L.A. Times.

For much of the last decade, the biggest game franchises — “Call of Duty” and “Grand Theft Auto” among them — were driven by guns and disparaging views of women and minorities. And unlike the Republican Party, the game industry has done this without lobbying money.

Man, how bad are you at research? The most recent GTA had one of the protagonists as a black man. I am sure you will say the disparaging thing toward women was the whole “have sex with a prostitute and then run them over with your car.” That’s only disparaging if you think that 1. Having sex with a prostitute demeans women (if you do think that, you are sexist as fuck. It’s a profession that plenty of women choose to do. Some are forced into it, but some women do it out of financial desperation. Are you saying those women are lesser for making that choice? That’s sexist as fuck), and 2. you ignore the fact that you can run over every single character in the game with your car, if you want.

As for CoD, those games run the gamut in terms of ethnicities of the protagonists and antagonists. And there are lots of chicks in the games too. Where’s the sexist part there? Still showing off those stellar research skills, Todd.

It may as well have been content unwittingly aimed directly at the so-called alt-right community, the loosely defined movement made up of social media-savvy white nationalists that has also attracted neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and misogynists.

Find me some evidence, ANY evidence, that this insane bit of hyperbole is even remotely true? There isn’t any. None. You are so full of shit.

“The people who promoted Gamergate said they were concerned about journalism ethics,” read a post on PressThink, a site maintained by New York University professor Jay Rosen. “As a professor of journalism with a social media bent, I felt obligated to examine their claims. When I did I discovered nasty troll behavior with a hard edge of misogyny.”

Wow, a quote that has NO additional context. I’d love to hear their evidence. Maybe a link to the article, so we can review it ourselves? What’s that? Nothing? Gee, it makes me think that you were just quote-mining for people who agreed with you that you could use to help make what you say sound good. In fact, a single link at all in this article would have been nice. You know, help the credibility thing along.

So Hollywood isn’t out of touch with the real — make that conservative — America, after all. The entertainment powerhouses behind the world’s biggest games have directly targeted it. And now the rest of the country — the majority of voters behind the popular vote, if you will — can’t press the jump button to avoid it.

This article was as lacking in evidence was it was in ANY substantive connections between GamerGate and Trump. I’m not at all surprised that the connection was made, but I was at least hoping that destroying it would be harder than this. And I’m sure that Todd will say that researching all of this is difficult. Well, I think I’ll let Milo destroy that argument to close this out.

Until next time, a quote,

“I’ve been doing it for a year. It’s not that hard, you just gotta do the work.” – Milo Yiannopoulos

Two years ago, there was a blog post written, a video by Mundane Matt DMCA’d, and a massive backlash that followed, which was given steam after a video by Internet Aristocrat. That began the consumer revolt known as GamerGate. It was a brutal struggle, with the media doing everything in their power to make those who supported the cause look like the biggest misogynists in the world. The battle brought sides together who had always hated each other to fight against a common enemy. Friendships were made. Battle lines were drawn. The struggle got ugly, and then it ended. To be honest, it didn’t end with a bang. It all kind of fizzled out. However, something recently came to light that truly blew open the gates on the original beliefs surrounding Zoe Quinn and how all of GamerGate got started. It is something that has vindicated everyone involved. Leo Pirate made an amazing video about it. See for yourself, then we’ll talk about it.

It is amazing. Absolutely amazing. After two years, we have finally been vindicated. In conceivable way, GamerGate has been vindicated. Zoe Quinn’s lies have been unmasked for all to see. Her manipulation of the Rebel Game jam and her collusion with Nathan Grayson is laid out for all to see. Gee, it’s almost like he had some prior relationship with her. Oh, right, Stephen Totilo said that that didn’t start up until after the articles were published. Because he’s TOTALLY not full of shit, right?

Quinn has been exposed as a doxxer, harasser, and being completely full of shit. She was constantly trying to sabotage the Rebel Game Jam that she was made famous for. This was something that she had planned to do. Gee, Nathan, didn’t see you talking about that. I wonder if it was because of a RELATIONSHIP that you had with her. I’m not slut-shaming. I’m collusion-shaming. I will shame the fuck out of her and him for having a relationship that OBVIOUSLY made it so that him writing about her is a conflict of interest. I don’t believe for a second that he just hit the send button on his article and then called her up and said, “hey, wanna fuck?” That’s ridiculous.

Now it’s been exposed the Quinn’s network of scumbags, Crash Override Network (just CON for short. How fitting) has been actively working to dox, attack, and blacklist anyone that they don’t like. What’s more, we have evidence showing how some of them will take the blame so that they can avoid looking bad as a whole. With people like an Amazon employee who publicly condemned people for doc-dropping being among their number. It truly is amazing how far down this rabbit hole of bullshit goes. But it proves, definitively, that Quinn and her little cabal are so utterly terrible

Oh, and as a nice little cherry on top, CON worked hard to help get the attention away from the disgusting pedophile Sarah Nyberg, aka Sarah Butts. These people helped a pedophile. But hey, when you realize that Feminist Frequency has a pedophile who goes by Valis77 modding her Twitch streams and pedophiles like HannibalTheVictor as her most ardent defenders, then does these people’s chumminess with pedophiles really come as a surprise?

Keep this in mind, all of this is coming from someone who went to the UN to talk about how hard her life is being the victim of “harassment.” Now we have verifiable evidence that Quinn and her cohorts are harassers and doxxers. What was that quote Quinn had about the harassers believing that they are the good guys? With the release of the harassment episode of Candace Owens and how she was able to show that Quinn was using sock puppet accounts to attack her, I guess what that hypocritical, blue-haired bitch had to say is prescient, isn’t it? She does think she’s the good guy, and she is in the wrong. Funny how that works.

Oh, and here’s a nice little way to bring this back to GG – it has been revealed that Dina was indeed manipulating the development of Mighty No. 9. It’s something that we already knew, of course, but irrefutable evidence just makes it that much better. At least her story ended with her crashing and burning out of the game that she helped fuck up. Also in the chat logs, there is a bit where they were talking about how they needed to coordinate news articles to keep the pressure on GamerGate. The link Leo posted in his video is just amazing!

GamerGate has been vindicated, and I’m not gonna lie – it does feel a little sweet. I’m glad that now, two years later, we can rest knowing that our side of the fence truly has always had the moral high ground, in every conceivable way. It’s just awesome. With each leak that happens, the people who are abusing their power and feeling the hurt. I’m glad about that. I bet the look on Quinn’s dye-soaked face was just priceless when the Internet was ripping her and hers to pieces. Wonder if that landwhale Randi Harper had to attack the Oreos for a while. Mad about me insulting her like that? She’s a doxxer, and we have irrefutable proof that she did that, how she was using sock puppet account and bots to inflate her social media pages, and abused her power with Twitter, who she and the rest of CON are tight with. Fuck her. Fuck all of them.

This is just great, and watching the hugbox of SJWs yelling and screaming puts a smile on my face. It’s good to be right.

Until next time, a quote,

“There we go! That’s what I like to see. A nice, big smile…” – Joker, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

The first time I ever heard the name Milo Yiannopoulos is during the GamerGate battles in the gaming community. He was a guy who was very open about not being a gamer. But he found this battle against corrupt journalism and the SJW forces that were part of it interesting enough to get involved. It helped get a lot of respectable credibility to the battle due to Milo being a smart guy and an eloquent speaker. During those days, it was fun to see his latest post. But those days are gone. While some remnant of GamerGate still exists, it’s now just a term for a time when us gamers stood up and fought for our hobby.

The thing I’m left with is how there are now SO many people who I used to like on YouTube that I honestly can’t stand anymore due to how they are basically just as bad as the people they criticize in how they will ignore nuance and judge people harshly right out of the game. Milo is a part of this. I still follow him on Twitter. I do like to have a varied perspective. But the truth is that outside of GamerGate, I know for a fact that him and I would agree on very little, and him and his ilk’s use of the term “Leftist” is just as annoying as how SJWs are eager to call everyone who doesn’t agree with them conservative.

I consider myself a liberal. Shocker, I know. I don’t consider myself part of the regressive left. But I still am a person who has liberal sensibilities, along with a few libertarian ones. I took a political quiz, and it seems I’m part of the Libertarian Left. See for yourself.

So, does this make me a “Leftist” now? I’m not some crazy SJW. Is that what it takes? What does it take in order to be a Leftist? Because there are SO many talking heads who use this line, I honestly can’t find where the line is. One of you come in and tell me. Because this is all so confusing.

As I said, I’m a liberal. I make no secret that I am for universal health care. There’s no reason why this country shouldn’t have it. At least none that I’ve heard. Got a girly-mate who works in a billing agency for doctor’s offices, and she has told me many times that single-payer would make her job so much easier, and save so many offices money. Oh, right, that’s “anecdotal evidence.” God forbid someone in the industry might know a thing or two. I worked medical records for a while. Let me tell you, if there had been single payer, my job would have been easier too. More anecdotes! Whatever will we do! So many insurance companies I had to send records to. Annoying.

We live in this weird world right now. We have people who should hate one-another standing together to fight a common enemy – SJWs. The battle against SJWs and third-wave feminism is bitter and it has made enemies put aside their differences for a higher goal. However, I am starting to realize that, when that goes away, we’re still going to be enemies. I will never agree with Milo’s politics, and I will find his continued use of the term “Leftist” to describe anyone on the left annoying. Once all is said and done, I figure most of the hard-right people I have made and agreed with will go back to being people I argue with on a daily basis and who tell me that I am some dumb liberal.

I follow Milo’s Twitter page because, unlike our SJW friends, I like seeing an opinion that doesn’t agree with me. I don’t live in an echo chamber. If your views aren’t challenged, then what’s the point of having discourse? However, I just can’t help but think that all of this “Leftist” terminology is becoming just as overused as “regressive” or the one that is the most overused anti-SJW term of all – cuck. I cannot tell you how dumb I find this term. For starters, it makes no sense in the context of how they use it. The term “beta” is more fitting for the kind of men that these people are talking about. But anytime there’s someone on the left who doesn’t agree with these people, I guarantee that they’ll have their audience coming in and calling that person a cuck quite roundly. This term really needs to go.

So what was the point of all this? I guess it’s just a little rambling post. Not much more. I’m sure I’ll get some delightful people in the Comments to share with me their belief in how, because I actually think a lot of Milo’s positions are complete bullshit, I’m a regressive or a Leftist. That’s fine. As I said, a common enemy helps bring people together. We’ll see where things end up. Do with that what you will.

Until next time, a quote,

“I’m a firm believer in the idea that this world would not be very interesting if we all thought and felt the same.” – TJ Kirk